


Games of Dare

by neevebrody



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Canon Het Relationship, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 14:18:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neevebrody/pseuds/neevebrody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The answer is like trying to trap sand with open fingers.  What's the use to argue when he's heard the reasoning too many times?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Games of Dare

The night is warm and the twinkling lights of Kostas' Mediterranean Garden give it a fairy-tale glow. Nancy looks beautiful in the plain black dress, spaghetti straps falling on sun-kissed shoulders in a kind of loose and fragile way that makes John stare. The dinner – a last minute change of plans – and the low-lighted halo of hair framing her face shouldn't leave him feeling vulnerable, but it does.

The restaurant's owner is a good friend of Patrick Sheppard so they always have a table here no matter the crowd. John brings her here when he needs to say something that might cause their conversation to get out of hand. It's harder to make a scene in a place where you're known by everyone from the sous chef to the boys who come around to fill the water glasses.

And tonight, Nancy has brought him here.

So far, the discussion has been civil, even pleasant – a surprise party for her brother's upcoming birthday and plans for the family to gather at the summer house on the Vineyard. She doesn't outright ask him to go, but it's clear she's looking forward to it. He studies a lone asparagus spear and lets her talk because he knows he won't be there. His next mission is already prepped.

Not that a weekend on the Vineyard wouldn't be great… cold beer, steamed crabs, sailing. It's the making nice and going through the motions that grates, for both of them he suspects. It would be a few days of award winning performances and nobody willing to discuss anything more controversial than a baseball score. Nancy's family doesn't speak about John's service and they treat Nancy's job as if she were running her own boutique. Though much in their relationship is broken, John takes it as a point of pride that he knows Nancy – nothing so frivolous could ever satisfy her.

He watches as she picks at the petite fillet on her plate. His is already a memory, a hard lump mid-chest, somewhere between not telling her about the latest phone call and listening for the sound of the shoe he fears is about to drop. Gazing into her bottomless brown eyes, he empties the bottle of wine into their glasses. She offers a nervous smile and they finish their meal without words.

After dinner, Nancy wants to walk in the park across from the restaurant. It's nice out so John slips off his jacket, lets her thread her arm through his as they walk in silence. She doesn't talk about certain things anymore; and, at the moment, all he seems to need is the fragrant veil of the night and the comforting click of Nancy's heels on the walkway.

They exit onto Eighteenth Street and hail a cab to take them back uptown. He takes her hand in the taxi, something he hasn't done in a long time, and scoots closer. She accepts his unspoken invitation, resting her head on his shoulder, unleashing the clean, sexy scent of her perfume in the closed space. It plays with his mind. He closes his eyes, parses out the familiar bouquet from the many others mingling in the cab – patchouli, pine tree air freshener, old shoes, sweat – and wonders why it wasn't always this way. The thought cuts him, a gash of lost longing, like missing a piece of something and trying in vain to name it. The feeling is dark and gathers like storm clouds around his heart.

Back home, he barely gives her time to put down her purse before he's kissing her. She doesn't act surprised even though he thinks she should be. He half expects her to push him away, feign a headache or work to do and retreat to her study. Instead, she kisses him back, tugging his shirttail loose and working the buttons of his jeans while he unzips that slip of a dress she's wearing.

In bed, they're a hot tangle of sheets and limbs. She rides him, her sanctity and excuses burned up by the heat of her need. Sweat plasters hair in a slash across the hollow of her throat – the same spot that used to taste so sweet and always made her wet when he tongued it. He watches her, nipples hard and peaked, and it crosses his mind what that dark longing could be.

The look on her face and the heady scent of their passion assaults him, haunts him of other nights, of that first summer when love was a game of dares and sex the prize. The boathouse, the grass down by the water, the bedroom, the kitchen, the stairs, and even the upstairs hallway… Jesus, it feels a lifetime ago – a lifetime of secrets and phone calls in the night, of blank stares and angry, angry words.

Nancy plunges her hand between her legs as he thrusts hard into her, biology trumping the storm between his ears. She comes hard with a string of moans and dirty half-words, ending with a breathless plea for more. That's when he feels it himself – a tingling at the base of his spine, the hairs standing on end like someone walking over his grave. When he scoops her up, she's still trembling. He lays her out beneath him, pulling one leg up to place it over his shoulder. Bracing with his arms, he gives her what she wants, hips snapping the hot slap of skin on skin, going in deep, deeper, faster until she's moaning again and clawing at his arms. His brain strokes white – like lightning through clouds – then everything fades as the shards of the room fall away around him.

~~~

The sex leaves him sated and maybe a little lost – a feeling of floating underwater, and the coolness of Nancy's skin his safety line. Minutes have passed, or maybe hours.

When she speaks, her words break the calm like a hammer and glass, but not with a bang… with a whisper. Words dressed in sweet, sleepy breath ghosted over his ear, "I'm leaving you." Simple words that crowd all the air from the room and weigh as heavy as her gaze at his back.

John opens his eyes; he tries to swallow but his mouth is too dry. How many times has she hurled those same words at him in disgust… or as a threat? She shifts beside him and he can tell from her movements she has nothing else to say. A reply sticks in his throat and gets lost with the dip and creak of the bed. He's left with nothing but the swirl of empty air where she's been and the room waking around him with the sound of her in it.

Does he get up? Deny her little victory? The answer is like trying to trap sand with open fingers. What's the use to argue when he's heard the reasoning too many times? Nancy needs a participant, a partner, not just a transient presence in her life. She needs more than a cardboard cut-out to stand around at functions, employ the proper social graces, and say the right things. She needs more than someone to occasionally warm her bed.

He's resisted her logic before, mentally holding out his arms to block the barrage and cursing it for making so much goddamn sense. Using his own silence, hard and unyielding, like a shield, standing steadfast and pathetic in his excuses, a child's game where someone has to be the winner, has to be right at all costs.

He doesn't resist now; he doesn't even move. The burning need to be right snuffed out, his justifications drift away like the smoke from a smoldering candle. There's nothing to say that hasn't been over-used, over-worked, and over-analyzed.

Or does the logic make him a coward?

If he turns around, will the sight of her clutching the bag she's packing force him to say something foolish? Something they both know he won't mean but would make her stop and try one more time. Fuck it, wasn't that the definition of failure – trying to carve a different outcome from the same old behaviors? 

The snick of the door has all the grace of a slap in the face. Still, John waits – until she's had enough time to get downstairs, until she's locked the door behind her, until the heartbeat of the house has subsided and it's quiet again.

Finally, he gets out of bed. He follows her path, making a stop at the bar. The sweet smell of her skin circles him, padding closer and closer like a hungry animal. He pours a drink and goes to stand naked at the window. At worst, he wants to dull the blades of silence. At best, he wants to feel less of a heel for not telling Nancy about that phone call, for thinking it would have made a difference, or for maybe not caring. 

A generous dose of reality burns like the whisky. Knowing at least he can't hurt her anymore, he'll take that and another drink, certain the notion of _this's the way it should be_ waits for him at the bottom of the bottle.

**Author's Note:**

> games of dare: to engage in an activity that could result in damage to one or more of the participants


End file.
